On any level, you have to give Gareth Evans credit; Finding he can’t get funding for the movie he wanted to make, the Welsh moviemaker upped sticks and travelled to Indonesia, where, upon acquiring funding, he’s started to make quality cinema on a budget. His second feature; The Raid; is enjoying great levels of success and is bound to appear on many future best action film lists.
There is a tower block in Jakarta which is a haven for some of the worst murderers, thieves and drug pushers the city has to offer. Run by crime boss Tama Riyadi (Ray Sahetapy) and his two henchmen Andi and Mad Dog (Yayan Ruhian and Donny Alamsyah), it’s impenetrability has never been questioned… until now. Rookie SWAT member Rama (Iko Uwais) heads up a bunch of colourful coppers charged with going in and cleaning it up once and for all. Except The Raid they planned goes horribly, horribly wrong, and what follows is Rama’s fight for survival, and his fight to be reunited with his pregnant wife.
There’s a surprising amount of realism shining through The Raid’s mental action; take the drug lab fight, where the last two younger cops left bust out some moves and destroy meth cooks front, right and centre, while you have the much older Lt. Wahyu (Pierre Gruno) just lobbing chair and filing cabinets about to lay down the law, which makes sense since I doubt Wahyu could keep up with the younger lads and coked up smackheads at his age. Another example comes during the second Mad Dog fight scene; there’s some near perfection flowing, intense fist and kick exchanges, then someone stumbles backwards and falls over a body, and with the over the top levels of action going on, it’s pleasing to see little things like this stand out.
Speaking of O.T.T., there are ridiculously brilliant bits of action hidden away in The Raid; whilst a gang member jumping down a hole only to get speared out a window WITHOUT touching the floor would make the film a classic all by itself, I’ll just say fridge rocket launcher, and leave it at that.
A lot of the detail in The Raid is also spot on; before it hits the fan and the SWAT team is working it’s way through the tower block, the accuracy of police tactics going through the rooms is brilliant; I wasn’t surprised to learn the cast had been on a military tactics course prior to filming because it’s THAT good. The pacing was excellent all round too, as there’s exactly the right balance of plot, action and character scenes.
Quality black humour is abound. On the trip to the actual tower block, Sgt. Jaka (Joe Taslim) bigs-up the main three bad guys of the film (going dangerously close to calling them demons of men) and establishes how badass they are, before we cut to all three stood in a row, with the big boss Tama Riyadi, just slumped against a desk, eating noddles, in a sweaty vest with gut nearly hanging out. It’s hard to pull off, but Evans has got it spot on; he even steps it up, with the first ever “blink and you won’t get it” gag; in the same scene, Riyadi executes five men in a row, but he runs of bullets for the last man, asks his crying last victim to hold his gun as walks over to his draw and sees a hammer, making the audience fear for the brutal murder about to follow, before 10 or so bullets come rolling out from the back of the draw, causing some relief to viewers (even though Riyadi has other ideas and picks up the hammer anyway). All in two seconds. Not only does it add some level of humour to film but also kills the idea the audience may have the big crime boss is a joke after his gut ‘n’ noodles shot and establishes him as a truly horrendous human being.
Towards the end the martial arts fights do become quite draining; they were excellent, don’t get me wrong, but we’ve seen more than enough fist fighting by then, and apart from minor split second moments, there was nothing really to tell them apart. To be honest a few more gun battles would have worked better, since the ones at the start of The Raid were done incredibly well.
That said, it’s really a minor nitpick, as with the small amount of action films being released this summer and beyond, I’m fairly certain The Raid is going to be the action movie of the year; despite a small pool, it has the strength and depth to be a classic; and even though I personally hate it when other reviewers say things like this, there’s no doubt – The Raid is the Asian Die Hard. With the success it’s having in western cinema alone and plans for a sequel, sign us up for more of the same please Mr. Evans!
